Sentential subjects 349
The second group of predicates which regularly admit sentential subjects
in basic usage is causative predicates of emotional states–predicates such as
pasenneng ‘make happy’, pasossa ‘make sad’, pacengngeng ‘surprise’, and
others. There is again speaker variation with respect to the acceptability of some
of these structures, as well as variation in preference of ja' and mon.
(61) %Mon/Ja' Ale' ngeco' sapedha ma-sossa Ebu'.
if /COMP yngr.sibling AV.steal bicycle AV.CS-sad mother
‘That Little Brother stole a bicycle made Mother sad.’
(62) %Mon/Ja' Pa' Sale se mennang addu-wan ma-cengngeng oreng.
if /COMP Mr Sale REL AV.win compete-NOM AV.CS-surprise person
‘That Pak Sale was the one who won the competition surprised people.’
Again, the complementizer is optional.
(63) Ale' ngeco' sapedha ma-sossa Ebu'.
yngr.sibling AV.steal bicycle AV.CS-sad mother
‘That Little Brother stole a bicycle made Mother sad.’
(64) Pa' Sale se mennang addu-wan ma-cengngeng oreng.
Mr Sale REL AV.win compete-NOM AV.CS-surprise person
‘That Pak Sale was the one who won the competition surprised people.’
Sentential subjects also occur with predicates that take clausal object
complements when the predicate is in the object voice, as in (65) and (66).
Speakers exhibit a strong preference for the cleft construction in these instances,
perhaps because the insertion of the relative marker se and the cleft intonation
make the structures easier to parse.
(65) Ja' Ina mangkat dha' Jakarta are Kemmes se la e-kera Siti.
COMP Ina leave to Jakarta day Thursday REL already OV-think Siti
‘Siti thought that Ina left for Jakarta on Thursday.’
(66) Ma-becce' sapedha motor-ra bi' obing se e-coba' bi' Ali.
AV.CS-good motorcycle-DEF with screwdriver REL OV-try by Ali
‘Ali tried to fix his motorcycle with a screwdriver.’
(65) is the object voice variant of (35a) and (66) the object voice variant of
(36a).